Originally published in Ainsworth's Magazine: A Miscellany of Romance (Chapman and Hall) vol.4 #23 (Dec 1843).
The want of some just and liberal measure of international copyright has been severely felt on this side the Atlantic, but with what grievous and almost crushing effects has it been attended in America! To be sure, the American publishers had no particular reason to complain; nor did it appear to a cursory observer, that the American "reading public" were labouring under any intolerable grievance, so long as they could purchase in the broad daylight the masterpieces of modern literature as soon as they could be torn from the press, at the mere price of paper and print;—though it would be very easy to shew that in the progress of years both seller and purchaser must be vitally and inevitably injured by the apparent or temporary benefit. But the American Author—how fared he, in the face of the giant evil!
Writers in other countries could suffer but little by the want of a wiser international arrangement. Even in France and Germany, native authors could of course command patronage and purchasers, unaffected, comparatively, by any extent to which the tide of English publication might set in, whether a popular work happened to be merely reprinted amongst them, or produced in a translated form. But it was and is far otherwise in the United States, when a native and an English author of equal merit are competitors. Of two equal stories in the same language, the American's must of course be rejected, because the Englishman's may be had for nothing.
Grievous beyond doubt has been the operation of the system, or want of system, upon the interests of authors and publishers here, who have in a thousand instances seen their fair and just hopes of profit and reward struck down, by the introduction of foreign-reprints at home, and the total destruction of their sale throughout that immense region of readers, called the British possessions abroad! But worse than this, bad as it was, has happened to the ill-fated and utterly uncared-for American author; for while the popular historian, novelist, or poet in this country could still boast of having his "public" to appeal to, and count securely upon his purchasers, however reduced by these nibbling narrowing influences, the man of genius, of whatever class, in America, had no public of any kind or quality to boast—no readers to reckon upon—for in what Fool's Paradise was he to dig for a publisher! He might as well go into the woods and beat about for a phœnix!
What, indeed, can be said to justify—what advanced in the way of parallel to, a state of things, under which a writer possessed of the great original power, the attractive talents, and proportioned celebrity that distinguish Fenimore Cooper, is compelled to seek in a country not his own, the fair meed of his literary labour! London gives him hundreds for his manuscript, and New York buys his printed work for a guinea, and reprints it.
England, however, owes more to Mr. Cooper than he can ever owe to her. He has associated his name with our land's language; he has familiarized us with the unknown; he has brought the far-off close to us as are our very homes; he has carried us where no author in any age or of any class ever carried-us before. There is this peculiarity in the writings of Cooper—and a charm lies in the peculiarity, an element of power quite unconnected with the indisputable talent he possesses—that the ground he occupies in most of his leading works is new, the scenes are painted for the first time, the agents are for the most part strangers; for if we ransacked all European literature we should find nothing bearing resemblance to them—and yet we instantly recognise what people (out of America, too) pleasantly call their "naturalness"—we at once feel them to be true.
Of course we are not now speaking of his sea-scenes, but his forestscenes. What a fairy-land have these been to thousands! What dreams made real—dreams of marvels previously unimagined, and else inconceivable!
It is long since Cooper's earliest tales became known in this country—long even since they became familiar to readers of all ranks. Amidst the wide working of the potent and wondrous spells of Scott, whose current of popularity was all but sufficient—
"To kill the flock of all affections else,"
the stranger stood forth and found a willing audience. At his very first advance, he manifested the power to startle and impress. In the teeth of political prejudice in some quarters, and critical prejudice in others—in opposition to the ruling taste, and prepossessions the most widely diffused and powerful—he took hosts of readers captive, and at once marked them for his own. He established himself as a writer, who where he was heard once, would be pretty sure to be heard twice. He had something to say, and besides that, he had a manner of his own in saying it. People might dislike, might misunderstand, his works, but they could not treat them with indifference. They were never common-places in what they included, if the outline or even the general substance were little better. Good or bad, they were not to be laid down, dismissed, forgotten. With all their weaknesses, there was sure to be an effect somewhere, whose influence was to be an existence for life among the reader's literary recollections. He won his position, then, and he has held his footing.
When we say that these permanent influences belong to his earliest writings, it is of course because we rank these with his best. The "Pilot," and the "Red Rover," are tales never read without excitement, or remembered without, pleasure. The author is, as much as any man, at home on the sea; his ships are not as painted ships
"Upon a painted ocean;"
nevertheless, there is much in these stories that might be cheerfully spared, for either the strength of one portion of the book makes the rest feeble, or the author quitting the sea for the land, gets really out of his element. With one set of characters we are breathing fresh air in company with old Nature herself, and with another we are choked up in,a theatre, where "nothing is but what is not;" seeing a play, and not a good one. To this class belongs a later production, the "Water Witch," which, though less striking in its purposes and interest, has its masterly scenes, but weakened by frequent repetition in spite of the great skill with which this is managed.
An instance, moreover, of the fire and animation which Cooper is sure to feel when he once gets afloat, of the living effect which he can give to water even though it flow but in a canal, is seen in that bold vigorous Venetian boat-race with which the "Bravo" breaks upon us so dashingly. Many years have passed since that picture was presented to the imagination, but there it is still, associated in its degree with proud and high reminiscences of Venice; remembered and kept before the mind's eye, as we remember the contest of the famous bowmen, Locksley and Hubert—the colloquy between the immortal Vicar and Mr. Jenkinson—or anything else equally unlike, so that it be equally true.
The "Spy" is another of the tales which, at whatever age they may be read, make an impression not easily worn out. With younger and more impressible readers, the perusal of it is an event;—so strange, various, contradictory, but absorbing, is the interest of character belonging to it. It is written on the author's favourite plan, of protracting and reserving while he may, and then plunging to his effect. The character of Harvey Birch is brought out, as Birch himself would manage an escape, when eyes which must be deceived in spite of their vigilance are upon him—slow riding at first, as though nothing was intended, a quicker pace insensibly as danger thickens, till the critical moment comes and concealment is impossible—then, "off" is the word. The effect of the "Spy" depends upon the closing pages; it is comparatively flat as we thread the mazy paths that lead us there. The repulsiveness created by the spy himself gradually lessens, curiosity and admiration as slowly increase, until the final revelation in the scene with Washington comes—than which we know of few things more impressive or affecting.
When the poor, despised, baited, trampled man—the seeming spy of the enemy, whom a thief at the gallows-tree would have scorned—the hunted wretch, who, in his disinterested love of country, has met dangers and endured ignominies unspeakable—is recognised by the illustrious leader as a friend to the liberties of America—as an incorruptible, a noble-minded patriot, who must be contented to bear the brand of a foe to all he holds dear lest living interests should be compromised—we see a picture which renders this extraordinary character a treasured recollection.
But above all that is best of this author's delineations, his vivid, romantic, and yet truth-stamped pictures of sea-life or land-life, most readers will place his portraitures of Indian character, and his expositions of life under many varying circumstances of interest, in the vast wilds and desert regions of America. In the trackless prairie and the interminable forest, Cooper seems to have an elasticity of existence, a sense and knowledge of life, a fertility of resources and expedients, that render him a sort of literary representative of the imperishable Leatherstocking himself; and had his contribution to the stock of human pleasure been confined solely to bis creation of this curious and inimitable character, worked out as it is, with unfaltering power, through five successive tales, he would still have "said his say," and won the kindly and grateful respect of more than one country.
The mere extent to which this character is drawn out, renders it a literary curiosity. There is scarcely an instance of a conception being so fully sustained under the circumstances which have governed the completion of this portraiture—this om of a life from youth to age, composed so disjointedly, yet finished with such harmonious relationship in all its parts. No character, perhaps, was ever so much tried, without wearing out the interest it at first created. No writer could run a greater risk, in the attempt to add to such strength, of weakening and crippling it. But "La Longue Carabine" sprang from a brain that was conscious of its strength,
"And saw as from a tower the end of all."
It did seem dangerous to meddle with Him of the renowned Rifle; to conduct him into other times and scenes, and force a comparison with those wanderings and adventures with Uncas and Chingagook, in which such unrivalled powers of stimulating curiosity and protracting excitement are displayed. Yet what a new exhibition of the same faculty interests and enchains us in the delineation of the old Trapper; and how the reality grows upon us, as the years roll over him, and we see the self-same being, under different modifications of his intelligence and experience, moving amidst the immeasurable prairie, and, when the mighty waste is all one flame, combating the terrific agency of fire by turning it against itself. Over and over again may these narratives of forest adventure be read, and the scenes are as vivid as at first, and the Trapper never grows tedious.
More daring still was it (but none will regret the daring) to depict, in recent years, the youth of a character so established in the partiality of all readers; and to carry us back, as in the "Deerslayer," to those early times when the heart of the simple, honest creature was fiercely attacked by desperate beauty, he in his exquisite modesty unconscious all the time of his conquest—when, too, his famous rifle first came into effective play against a savage of a rare sort, winning for its hopeful master the designation of Hawkeye. The "Pathfinder" followed, and worked out other essential points of a character, so powerfully conceived, and finished with such mastery of hand, as to be attractive in every stage of its history.
Some one has said that the creation of "Uncle Toby" was the finest compliment ever paid to human nature. Compliments to our poor clay, quite as fine, to say the least, are to be found out of Sterne's once over-estimated writings; to our mind, La Longue Carabine figures in the select list.
The portraitures of Indian character have doubtless all the leading lines of fidelity; truth seems everywhere to regulate the drawing; and they are filled up with unfailing power. We never see, as in Cooper's pictures of common people in cities, and soldiers on their march, signs of the weak hand and the unnoting eye. He himself seems Indian when painting Indians. The instances are numerous. The general features of the tribes he has introduced are strongly marked, and the individual characteristics are ably discriminated. There is a fine fire-eyed young savage, whom we remember in "The Borderers,"—he calls to mind the acting of Kean. Of Uncas and his silent heart-buried passion it is unnecessary to speak; he stands out brightly in the collection. While border-life, savage manners and habits, the "sands and shores and desert wildernesses," retain an interest, Cooper's tales will not be read without a charm.
We now take up the latest addition to the American novelist's long list—"Wyandotté; or, the Hutted Knoll."
A short account of this must suffice. It is the history of the sufferings of a family settled on the borders, at the outbreak of the Revolution. The head of it, Captain Willoughby, had served in the king's army, until approaching age and other considerations warned him to collect his worldly means, and secure a promising settlement about one day's march from Susquehannah. After toiling through a full share of the difficulties attendant upon such a step, and just as he is beginning to feel at home, surrounded by an attached family, the Revolution begins. His son is in the army, a gallant, rising soldier, steadfast to his colours; but the father grows argumentative, and wavers between freedom to America and fidelity to England. Hence an interest arises, which is heightened hourly as the war spreads, and apprehensions of danger from the Indians and the lawless adventurers, set in motion by the turbulence of the time, begin to prevail. The "Hutted Knoll," so is the imperfectly-fortified place called, becomes the object of attack, by a mingled troop of red-skins, and painted whites more barbarous still. A large portion of the work discusses the preparations for the siege, the conflicting feelings of the family and their few dependents, the stratagems employed on both sides, and the hair-breadth escapes and romantic adventures of the chief persons of the story. The end is tragic; death sweeping away most of the actors, and leaving a solitary marriage, like a flower, blossoming above the grave.
As in many of his former works, the author takes his time before he throws in his interest. He suffers our feelings to lie fallow, and then to be sure we have a fair crop of emotion. The power he has so often displayed of concentrating his force upon one spot, and working excitement by dint of going doggedly into details which seem of minor importance, and are often tedious, until the catastrophe shoots up, like a pyramid from a broad naked level, he has employed here, and with effect. It is unfair to complain that much of the narrative is dull, when the dullness is a necessary step to the excitement; but however essential to the plan, it may not the less be felt sometimes.
There are two female figures charmingly drawn; one is Willoughby's daughter, who marries, and dies most needlessly; the other, Maud, a frank, beautiful, impassioned girl, who is his daughter in all but birth, and a fond and ardently loving sister to his son, until, on the eve of womanhood, an instinct of her sex reminds her that there is no relationship, and another kind of love brings alternately shadow and sunshine across her path. The son shares this feeling, and a love-conflict, delicately managed, gives rise to several touching scenes, which terminate happily at the altar.
Wyandotté himself is a character peculiarly the author's own. He is a sort of half-outcast from the Indians, a "Tuscarora," who had attached himself to the whites, acquired the soubriquet of Saucy Nick, picked up their language, and blended a hundred bad qualities with many good ones. As Saucy Nick, he had been flogged by his military master; but he continues in his service, cherishing revenge, and bethinking him that he is a great chief though degenerate, until by degrees he abandons to some extent his depraved and rum-drinking habits. It is at this period, that Willoughby, when in great danger, and exasperated by the desertion of some of his people, threatens him again with the lash. The Indian's back, as the threat is uttered, seems to feel the old wounds; and the desire of revenge burns into his heart:—
"'Listen,' said the Indian, sternly. 'Cap'in ole man. Got a head like snow on rock. He bold soldier; but he no got wisdom enough for gray hair. Why he put he hand rough on place where whip strike? Wise man nebber do dat. Last winter he cold; fire wanted to make him warm. Much ice, much storm, much snow. World seem bad—fit only for bear, and snake, dat hide in rock. Well; winter gone away; ice gone away; snow gone away; storm gone away. Summer come in his place. Ebbery ting good; ebbery t'ing pleasant. Why tink of winter when summer come, and drive him away wid pleasant sky?'"
The Captain replies to this:—
"'In order to provide for its return. He who never thought of the evil day in the hour of his prosperity, would find that he has forgotten, not only a duty, but the course of wisdom.'"
"'He not wise!' said Nick, sternly. 'Cap'in pale-face chief. He got garrison; got soldier; got musket. Well, he flog warrior's back; make blood come. Dat bad enough; worse to put finger on ole sore, and make 'e pain, and 'e shame, come back ag'in.'"
Wyandotté is important to the Captain; he can give information, but is distrusted—yet he tells truth. His replies are characteristic:—
"'Answer the questions in the order in which I put them.'
"'Wyandotté not newspaper to tell ebbery t'ing at once. Let cap'in talk like one chief speaking to anoder.'
"'Then, tell me first what you know of this party at the mill. Are there many pale-faces in it?'
"'Put em in the river,' answered the Indian, sententiously; 'water tell the trut'.'
"'You think that there are many among them that would wash white ?'"
Distrust of the Indian continues, in spite of many tokens of devotion, and of feelings the most grateful and refined, evinced towards the ladies of the party—indeed to all who use him kindly. There is a delicacy in his conduct that justifies even the appellation by which the author characterizes him, "this forest gentleman." But Captain Willoughby has a too vivid sense of the man's failings and degradation; he threatens him with flogging once more; and the forest gentleman, amidst a thousand proofs of gratitude and affection for the family, decoys the head of it into the woods, and avenges himself by a most deliberate assassination. "The old sores smarted."
After the commission of this cold-blooded murder, we have some difficulty in reconciling ourselves to the friendly offices of the savage towards the wife and children, and in appreciating his delicacy and refinements. Yet we must hold steadily the thread whose windings lead us into the recesses of the Indian nature, and we may find consistency in his desire to soften the blow to his favourite, the innocent Maud, who is not the daughter of Willoughby, whom he has murdered.
"'QOh! is it so, Nick!—can it be so?' she said; 'my father has fallen in this dreadful business?'
"'Fader kill twenty year ago; tell you dat how often?' answered the Tuscarora, angrily; for in his anxiety to lessen the shock to Maud, for whom this wayward savage had a strange sentiment of affection that had grown out of her gentle kindnesses to himself on a hundred occasions, he fancied, if she knew that Captain Willoughby was not actually her father, her grief at his loss would be less. 'Why you call dis fader, when dat fader. Nick know fader and moder. Major no broder.'"
And there is a touch of consummate art in the Indian afterwards. Though he has so recently urged Maud's want of natural affinity to the family as a reason why she should not grieve, he reminds her of the imaginary connexion, when proposing to effect the release of her lover (the Major, who has been taken prisoner) and to engage her in the attempt. Understanding a woman's feelings, he omits the word lover:—
"'Come wid Wyandotté—he great chief—shew young squau where to find broder.'"
The great chief Wyandotté is converted to Christianity and dies forgiven—a fate with which the author might have been content, without throwing in a reflection which seems to aim at discovering some palliation of the most monstrous crime, in the usages of a portion of civilized society. We are sorry to quote what follows:—
"Let not the self-styled Christians of civilized society affect horror at this instance of savage justice, so long as they go the whole length of the law of their several communities in avenging their own fancied wrongs, using the dagger of calumny instead of the scalping-knife, and rending and tearing their victims by the agency of gold and power, like so many beasts of the field, in all the forms and modes that legal vindictiveness will either justify or tolerate, often exceeding those broad limits, indeed, and seeking impunity behind perjuries and frauds."
We admire Mr. Cooper's talents, and we can enter into his feeling of impatient indignation at calumny and wrong; but the phrase, "savage justice," should never have been written; nor has any man a right to charge any order of civilized society with "affecting horror" of the foulest crime known to it.
For the rest, we wish him health and honour always.